Ditching the clutter on Facebook

Facebook’s new look manages to squeeze the stuff I care about into a small central section of the page, with navigation down the left and a stream of promoted junk at the right.

Here’s how you can make it a bit more tolerable, if you’re a Firefox user. First grab the Stylish Add On for the browser. You’ll need to restart when it’s been installed.

Next head to Facebook and your main news feed page. Click the S drop down added by Stylish, and choose “Write new style” followed by “For facebook.com” You’ll see a window like this appear.

Give it a name, like FB Tidyup, and add some custom CSS. This is a quick and dirty fix, but I don’t care about that right hand column, which handily has the ID rightCol, and so can be hidden with this code:

#rightCol {
display:none;
}

The main part of the page can be widened; I chose 800pixels, as it’s a little nicer, though of course not everything scales perfectly. Use this css

#contentArea {
width: 800px !important;
}

Put that all in the box and the results should be like this:

Click Preview to check you like the results, and then Save if you’re happy. The end result is your news feed looking something like this:

Published by Nigel

Freelance journalist since 1995, before that editor of Computer Buyer. I've written for many titles, including Personal Computer World, Computer Active, and Register Hardware. I also run the successful Toppy.org.uk site for users of Topfield PVRs.
View all posts by Nigel